Itinera calls on Belgian and European policymakers to develop a long-term innovation and growth strategy for the pharmaceutical, biotech and life sciences sector. This call builds on a report of a roundtable with a wide range of business leaders, stakeholders and policy experts.

Biopharma and life sciences is one of Belgium’s and Europe’s key economic sectors. Its future is now in flux due to the combination of three challenges and opportunities:

• increased geopolitical competition with China and the United States;

• tremendous acceleration in innovation and technology;

• mounting fiscal challenges for European governments, aggravating structural competitiveness handicaps.

“We have a choice between a frontrunner ambition involving strong biopharma nations such as Belgium, or a collective decline that will erode not just a high value-add sector but entire ecosystems of the knowledge economy, while increasing foreign dependencies”, says Marc De Vos, co-author and Co-CEO of Itinera. This report offers an agenda for immediate action to boost the innovation potential and investment attractiveness of Belgium. “It should be seen as a stepping-stone to a genuine industrial policy for biopharma and life sciences, transcending the political cycle.”

INVESTMENT AND EXPENDITURE LINKED TO SOCIETAL VALUE

The report advocates a positive growth and investment strategy for pharma, biotech and life sciences, in which expenditure is explicitly linked to the sector’s contribution to healthcare. According to Itinera, this societal dimension is critical for governments in need of budget prioritisation. At the same time, the report warns against too narrow a focus: the strategy must equally pay attention to innovators and the growth drivers of tomorrow, not only to the large, established players in the sector.

A EUROPEAN AND INTERNATIONAL LENS FOR BELGIUM

Itinera emphasises that every Belgian measure must be tested against the broader European context. The report points to international examples and countries that are frontrunners in certain areas, to show that a forward-looking approach also draws on best practices beyond our own borders.

Concretely, three priorities stand out for Belgium:

• Treat the EU’s legal 180-day ceiling for pricing and reimbursement decisions as a target to beat, not an outcome to accept: Belgium’s median time to patient access already stands at 476 days, against an EU average of 578 days.

• Match the operational speed of competing ecosystems in clinical research: Europe’s share of global commercial clinical trials fell from 22% in 2013 to 12% in 2023, while China’s role expanded sharply.

• Close the scale-up financing gap that still makes €100 million growth rounds hard to raise in Belgium, despite substantial domestic savings and institutional capital.

FOUR IMMEDIATE PRIORITIES

The report identifies four areas in which, according to roundtable participants, policymakers can take targeted immediate action:

• Market access: cut the real-world time to patient access, which across the EU averages nearly 600 days despite a legal 180-day ceiling for the pricing and reimbursement decision itself.

• Clinical trials and health data: reverse a measurable erosion: confidential input to the roundtable showed clinical-trial staffing at one major company in Belgium falling from around 50 people in 2020 to around 3 in 2025.

• Resilience and strategic depth: build capability beyond stockpiles, at a time when around 1 in 7 new medicines is already considered economically non-viable to launch in Europe.

• Capital and IP anchoring at European scale: unlock scale-up finance and keep intellectual property and decision centres anchored in Belgium, rather than seeing science generated here monetised and controlled elsewhere.